


Mary, Bloody Mary

by htebazytook



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Established Relationship, F/M, Het, M/M, Romance, Series 3, Slash, Smut, preslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-30
Updated: 2014-03-30
Packaged: 2018-01-17 14:35:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1391320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/htebazytook/pseuds/htebazytook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary befriends Sherlock Holmes for a reason.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mary, Bloody Mary

**Title:** Mary, Bloody Mary  
 **Author:** htebazytook  
 **Rating:** NC-17  
 **Warnings:** none  
 **Disclaimer:** *disclaims*  
 **Pairing:** Sherlock  & Mary, explicit John/Mary, explicit mentions of John/Sherlock  
 **Time Frame:** series 3, pre 3.2 The Sign of Three  
 **Summary:** Mary befriends Sherlock Holmes for a reason.

 

She intervenes, eventually. 

She drags John away from Sherlock, whose nose is bleeding, and convinces him to hail a cab. The cold air and the walking will calm him down, if nothing else.

Sherlock stands with her outside the kebab shop, blots the blood from his nose. John had always called him detached and cold and confident, but she’s just not seeing it. The power of his mind is indisputable, though, so whenever he does find out about her past (and he will, eventually), she'll be screwed if he isn't on her side.

"You don’t know anything about human nature, do you?"

"Nature? No." Sherlock looks at her, pleased with how different he is from ordinary people. "Human . . . ? No."

"I'll talk him round," Mary tells him, smiling even more at the startled gratitude in his eyes. She can work with that.

"You will?"

*

She cuts herself in the shower. Shaving, nick on her ankle, the kind of thing she hasn't done since she was a teenager, and it takes forever for the water to run clean. She keeps thinking it's bleeding again but it's just the reddish shower gel she'd grabbed at Boots 'cause they'd been out of her usual brand. It smelled like cherry flavor instead of real cherries, off-puttingly cloying but she'd make do.

The whole time she blow dries her hair she can't get the idea out of her head that she's started bleeding but whenever she touches the cut her hands come away clean.

Mary _hates_ it when her roots grow in. She scowls at the encroaching darkness in the mirror for a minute, then has to laugh at the metaphor. Bleaching away all memory of her roots? I mean come on.

"You look lovely," John assures, appearing behind Mary in the bathroom mirror and slipping his arms around her waist.

"Oh really? Haven't even put my face on yet."

John's breath ghosts over the nape of Mary's neck. "You don't have to do that, you know. As I believe I've just mentioned, you look gorgeous as is."

"Oooh, step up from 'lovely' now, am I?"

"Sexy," John amends, hands beginning to wander a little.

Mary laughs, leans back into the solid warmth of him. "We'll be late . . . "

In the mirror, John rests his chin on her shoulder and pulls a concerned face. "Right . . . but, er, on the other hand . . . " He's kissing the back of her neck between words now. " . . . it _is_ possible the sick people may still be sick an hour or two from now."

"An hour, eh?" Mary twists around to kiss him, cold porcelain counter against her back.

"Or two," John says, starting to pull Mary's Topshop T-shirt up.

Mary stills his hands. "Of course, there _are_ emergencies to consider."

John raises his eyebrows. "Sorry, is this not an emergency?"

Mary laughs until John's kisses get in the way. They end up in the bedroom, and John makes her come twice, slow and unhurried and uncomplicatedly good.

In the car on the way to the surgery John searches for the Chelsea game on the radio but lands on a jazz station instead. His hair is still slightly ruffled from when Mary had been twisting her fingers in it, and somehow that’s even more exciting than the sex had been.

"You know, I think I know this song," John says. "Though I do hate it, a bit, since my mum listened to it and her playing music generally meant spring cleaning. And that meant throwing my things out in the name of good housekeeping."

Mary laughs and turns onto main drag. "See, it's that sort of thing makes me glad I didn't have a mother."

John turns the volume up. When Mary glances over to him at a stoplight he's frowning. "What's it called, again . . . ?"

 _He's Funny That Way_. Billie Holiday cover. "Not a clue, love."

*

"Your mother is dead. Or at least as good as dead – if she were still in your life in any meaningful capacity you would've used her wedding dress."

"Not everyone wears their mother's wedding dress, Sherlock."

Sherlock's eyes narrow. They're sitting across from each other on the Eurostar. The fluorescent lights overhead coupled with the blackness out the window paint him in sharp angles and just how he wants to be seen.

He isn't attractive in the traditional sense. It's his quick-wittedness. The way he commands a room and his ability to invade your psyche while keeping himself aloof. Without that mind of his those eyes wouldn't be nearly as enticing, and the sleek ethereal quality to his body would've read as lanky and awkward.

"Maybe I fancied something more fashionable than what would've been worn in the 70's?" Mary muses. "I might be wrong, but I _think_ Paris is one of those, oh what do you call them, fashion capitals?"

Sherlock shakes his head, all seriousness. "Vintage _is_ fashionable. Something else . . . "

Mary doesn't know how John can spend so much time around Sherlock without giving in to giggles. She swallows the impulse and makes her brows knit ever so slightly, stiff-upper-lip's it with a lighter tone of voice: "So my mother is dead. You're quite right. What else?"

"You're . . . " Sherlock peers at her. "Upset by that. More than someone would be, normally."

"Oh, and you'd know what's normal, would you? It's normal _to_ be upset by the death of a family member."

"Your entire immediate family. All dead, and when they died you weren't on good terms with them."

Mary manufactures some more tension in her forehead. "Not sure how I could've been, really. I grew up in an orphanage, so I never actually did know them."

Sherlock's thinking. "No, that's - "

"So how'd you know then?" Sherlock loves to talk about his methods. Mary leans forward, exudes curiosity with her posture which Sherlock eats right up. "Shoelaces too tight? Eyeliner too sloppy?"

"You're planning a wedding, Mary. A ritual which heavily involves even the most distant of family members, not to mention several customs that require specific ones – the mother of the bride, your father 'giving you away' in rather an obsolete bit of symbolism."

"And?"

"You never talk about them."

Mary smiles at him as she relaxes back into her seat, a real smile. "Knew it."

"Knew what?"

"You do understand human nature," Mary says. "Even caught a touch of it yourself, I see. Oh stop worrying, I shan't tell anybody."

When they arrive at the terminal in Paris Sherlock makes no move to leave her, just stalls by looking down to retrieve his not-quite-black gloves from his pockets and slip his hands into them, avoiding the obvious question:

"Are you coming . . . with me, or something?"

"Don’t be absurd," Sherlock says. He knots his scarf, still looking down and God he really is terrible at lying. "This assignment from Mycroft merely coincided with your own plans."

“And where do you have to go for it?"

"The 6th."

"Oh right," Mary says. "So it’s on the way and everything. _Convenient_. I suppose you’ll be escorting me, then, since it just _happens_ to coincide, and all." She's gambling he's too caught up in his own lie to notice her inner Parisian compass. It's not a misstep – it's _fun_ to see how far she can push it until he notices something. And if he does, it's fun to convince him that he hasn't noticed anything, after all.

Sherlock sighs. He's finally starting to learn that lying to Mary is an embarrassment for the both of them. "I can't just let you wander around in a foreign country on your own."

Foreign country? In a way. Paris is pretty different from London, which is strange considering how nearby it is. D.C. and New York and Philly all look roughly the same when you get down to it – some with more monuments and some with redder bricks, but on the whole not so different. Paris, on the other hand, is rosy and white where London is dreary and gray. 

She'd come here in the height of summer and trailed a semi-legit real estate agent who'd screwed her client over. She didn’t give a shit about that, but he’d also screwed his fair share of desperate girls who’d not only looked too young to be legal, but were. It'd taken a couple of weeks before she got a clear shot at him. She's been back a couple of times since then, because apparently that particular brand of asshole has a thing for La Ville-Lumière. Maybe they know the jig is up and figure that dying with the Eiffel Tower in the background is the only way to class the situation up a little. But they still end up dead no matter where they end up geographically.

Mary raises her eyebrows at Sherlock. " 'Let' me?"

"If John were here, he'd - "

"Not talk about 'letting me' do this and that, I should hope," she says. "The last thing I need is a knight in shining armor, Sherlock. I've always preferred my men a bit less shiny and a bit more dirty, anyway."

Sherlock is affronted on John's behalf. "John _is_ chivalrous. For God's sakes, he's chivalrous to complete strangers who are entirely undeserving of it."

"Certainly," Mary agrees. "But he's dirty in bed."

Sherlock had opened his mouth to speak, but it stays like that without any words coming out.

"In the best possible way, of course. He does this thing with his - "

"It's this way, isn't it?" Sherlock ushers her down the street. She can differentiate between his face flushing from the cold and his face flushing from something else.

After a couple of blocks they pass a cluster of coke addicts lingering on the steps of an old church. Mary ignores them, but Sherlock feels the need to comment, " 'Homeless' youths, trying to goad tourists into throwing them the wrong size Euro in their haste to be charitable."

"Old habit of yours, wasn't it?" she snaps. It's hard not to, and Mary despising people like that wasn't going to seem too inexplicably out of character. 

"Not as such. I don't know what John's told you - and mind you he wouldn't actually _know_ \- but I never used because I was an _addict_. I simply required further mental stimulation for particular projects when I was - "

"That _is_ why addicts use." She gets the temptation, but unlike Sherlock she'd always been smart enough to stay away from it. Dealing was one thing, and the money was good as long as her parents didn't blow it all on blow, but she'd never touched the stuff herself. She'd always been young and sweet enough or, later, full-chested and tightly clothed enough to convince numb-minded morons to pay her a little extra which she pocketed and never mentioned to the numb-minded morons at home. That had definitely come in handy, later, and had seemed a better alternative to getting high.

Sherlock snorts. "Please, what do you know about that sort of thing?"

Mary shrugs. "I saw 'Trainspotting'?"

They're silent on the Rue de Maubeuge. Sherlock with his hands in his pockets, stalking through the white stone landscape and hell-bent on their sartorial mission.

"Do you mind if I ask you something, Sherlock?" Mary says.

Sherlock doesn't reply, just looks appalled by the redundancy of preempting a question with a question. 

"What do you see in John?"

Sherlock glowers at her. "He's my friend."

"Yeah, got that. So what do you value in him?"

Sherlock hesitates. "He's a capable - "

Mary cuts him off with a shake of her head. "The truth, please."

Sherlock debates a little before admitting, "I can do or say whatever I want to him, and he'll never leave. Never for good. And not even for you."

"Hmm, yes that sounds about right. Sorry, isn't it this way?" She walks ahead of him to get them back on the right track because at this rate they're never going to make it in time to secure her wedding dress.

"You're . . . not angry with me."

"No, why would I be?"

"I did just imply your fiancée is more loyal to me than to you."

"Yes, well, he _has_ known you longer, hasn't he? And I don't doubt he is _also_ loyal to me, so there's not much cause for worrying over it, really."

Sherlock just studies her, lets himself be led back toward the Seine.

*

"Good morning," Mary says without looking up. "When is your appointment?"

"I need to speak with John."

The waiting room is long and narrow with the only significant light coming from its glass front doors. Right now the bleak afternoon sunbeams are broken up by a familiar darkling silhouette with £500 shoes so shiny they look white in the glare.

Mary starts. "Sherlock. Erm . . . " She glances around the waiting room of the surgery. One older woman with high blood pressure, two routine checkups, a phone-obsessed kid with pinkeye. "He's a bit booked up today. Can it wait?"

Sherlock looks at Mary like she's sprouted an extra head. "It's for a case."

"Okay . . . well, the other doctor called off today, so John really can't be spared, I'm afr— _Sherlock_." She intercepts him, arm blocking the exam room door. "He just can't today, Sherlock."

"I _need_ him." He tries to sneak by her but Mary twists his arm away from the door handle and behind his back.

"Self defense classes," Mary says in response to his double take, stepping away. "It's a big bad world out there. Now listen to me. What exactly is it you need his help with?"

"It is _for_ ," Sherlock enunciates. "A _case_."

"And is there any particular reason somebody else couldn't assist you?"

" _Like who?_ "

Mary groans. "Really, Sherlock, you are just terribly _thick_ sometimes, aren't you? _Me_."

Sherlock scoffs. Then he frowns at her unflinching expression. "Oh, you're serious."

"Course I am." She grabs Mary's red coat from behind the desk, scribbles something on a post-it note telling the patients to play nice and form an orderly queue and plasters it on the receptionist's desk. "Come on, then."

*

"Where do you get the money?" Mary asks.

"Hm?"

She gestures around the interior of the cab Sherlock had hailed with a vengeance. "You're constantly taking cabs. Is it just that you're especially adept at sticking John with paying, or have you a secret hoard of gold tucked away somewhere?"

Sherlock sniffs. "I always pay John back. Eventually."

"Mm, or perhaps you have always depended on the kindness of strangers . . . "

"Strangers aren't typically kind, Mary," Sherlock says, rolling his eyes. 

"Aw." Mary pats his knee sympathetically. "You're too precious for this world, you are."

That expression of extreme distaste on Sherlock's face is well worth the ensuing silent treatment for the rest of the cab ride.

When they've stopped at a Caffè Nero in Covent Garden Sherlock makes a point of paying the cabbie before Mary gets out of the car. He tightens his scarf against the edge of bitterness to the late March air, shoves his hands in his pockets and heads toward the market.

The little square is bordered by glass and stone and metal, choked charmingly with cobblestones. It's mostly empty, this late in the day, some of the vendors starting to close up shop and gossip with one another between the last lingering pockets of the morning's crowd. Smatterings of regular people using it as a shortcut, an errant businessman on a Barclay's bike, a lone artist swinging her stocking'd legs from the stone ledge she'd perched on.

Sherlock strides across the sea of cobblestones with purpose, leads Mary into the covered part of the market and finally halts, pointing to the lower level. "See that man with the guitar?"

"The guitarist." 

"Glorified busker, at best. He plays here regularly, and his shifts coincide with the route of a suspect. Dr Hall, a newly hired surgeon at Bart's, who has exhibited some unusual behavior toward his coworkers after just a week of employment. Now, my theory is - " 

"Hang on, did you say Bart's?" Mary smiles knowingly. "A _ha_ \- Molly's hired you, has she?"

Sherlock won't look at her. "You're a clever enough woman, Mary, but I fear your deduction skills tend toward the obvious and - "

"So she _didn't_ hire you?" Mary's smile broadens. "Sherlock?"

"It doesn't matter _who_." He doesn't blush from being found out, isn't betrayed by any micro-expressions that suggest there was something _to_ find out. So it was just Molly, then. Poor girl. "I examined Hall’s office, and though it was nearly entirely unremarkable there was a notable excess of artwork on display. Apart from one high-end piece, all of it came from here – right here, in fact, in that shop. It's the only thing that stood out, and the man with the guitar is the one with the answers."

"And how exactly do you expect to get the answers? Just walk right up to him and commence interrogating?"

"That's where you come in. All you need to do is . . . You're quite sure you can handle this, Mary?"

"And why not? It's the beginning of a new chapter."

Sherlock gives the barest impression of a smile, not a fake one or a hidden one, and it's then that Mary knows for sure that she's got him. The rest is just going to be icing on the cake.

After they've gone over the plan she strolls by the shops on the upper level while Sherlock runs out to meet the guitarist down below. It's greenish-gray and Christmassy under the steel-beam roof, plants and bright advertisements popping out of the old world charm unapologetically. She takes her time descending the stairs after him.

"Excuse me, sir?" Sherlock's voice echoes. "Hello, my name is Trey, and I'm a medium. That means that I'm able to connect with people who cross over. Tell me, do you know someone who has recently passed? Someone you were close to?"

"Er, look, mate, I dunno who you are and like, well, I'm sure you mean well but - "

"Ooh, I'm seeing rather a lot of movement over here . . . "

''What, like the crowd?"

"Spirits."

"You what?"

"Yes, indeed," Sherlock says emphatically. "They're – yes, I do believe they're trying to tell me something . . . "

"Oi, if this is some kinda _joke_ \- "

Mary hurries up to them. "I do beg your pardon, so sorry, but, er, did you say you were a _medium_?"

Sherlock's face is so sincere. "Yes, ma'am." He closes his eyes and waves his palm in front of her face. "Yes . . . there's a spirit here right now for you Miss . . . Morstan, is it?"

Mary gasps, exchanging gobsmacked looks with the guitarist. "How the hell did you do _that_? I swear to God, that honestly _is_ my name, it honestly is." She pulls her British driver's license out of her purse and holds it up with trembling hands. 

The guitarist gapes at it, then at Sherlock. "Unbelievable . . . "

Sherlock closes his eyes, looking much the same as when he was receding into his mind palace. "It's a man. He's going on about how he heard you. Does that mean anything to you?"

Mary puts a hand to her mouth. "Oh, God. Is that you, dad?"

"He's talking to me now: _Tell my little girl I know she did everything she could_. He also says that he was listening when you read those stories to him on his deathbed, just as he'd read them to you as a child."

Her actual father was usually too busy meandering around the city in search of music gigs and other, less artistic gigs to participate in bedtime stories. The only thing she remembers him reading to her as a child were lists of items to relocate from houses with unsecured basement windows that she could sneak in through. "I miss him," Mary says, swallowing hard.

Sherlock rounds on the guitarist, jarring him from his concern over Mary.

"Hmm, I'm getting something here, it's, hm, does the color red mean anything to you? I'm getting something about a red object, very insistent about red . . . "

"Yes! Oh my God, this is barking . . . "

"Please know that this is the spirit's way of letting you know it's at peace."

"Oh my God . . . wow, this is just." The guitarist shakes his head in disbelief. "Wow . . . "

"I need to know if you've seen a man coming through here the past couple of days wearing a lab coat."

" _You_ need to know?"

"The spirit does."

"What, er . . . sorry, what d'you mean lab coat?"

"Oh, for God's sake. A _coat_ that - "

Mary places a hand on Sherlock's arm. "So sorry to butt in like this, but I think maybe he means the white ones?"

The guitarist frowns. "Well, I dunno. I mean I think so, yeah," he says. " _Why_ does the spirit need to know all that?"

"You blame the doctors for it, don't you?" Sherlock says, putting on a seriously disturbing show of sympathy.

His eyes widen. "For mum losing to the cancer? How'd you know?"

Sherlock places a comforting hand on the guitarist's shoulder. "She's telling me, right now. She wants you to let go, but in order to do that I need you to help us lead her to this doctor with whom she had unfinished business."

The guitarist's big eyes are welling up with tears, and Mary knows objectively that murder is considered the worst of the worst, but what Sherlock is doing just feels so much crueler. At least the people Mary had killed had deserved it, and at least she didn't lie to John about important things. He knows _who_ she is, of course he does, and she sees no reason why the lies she'd had to continue, that she'd begun well before meeting him, should be allowed to tarnish his view of her. What would be the point of that, when she has everything under control? People subconsciously lie all the time in relationships, but Mary is aware of her lying, and she does it _well_.

The guitarist's voice wavers as he continues, "I did see a man in a white coat – back, er, last Tuesday, it was? Came inside – there was a lot of people out in the square because a bloke was playing Beatles songs or whatever. Anyway I heard footsteps echoing around when I was sorting tips out down by the stage. So I looked up and saw a man in a white coat like you said."

Sherlock eyes are keen again. "Anything else?"

"No, I only saw him for a minute – he went up into one of the shops, I think."

" _Which_ shops?"

"I er, well, that way, I think?" The guitarist points in the direction of a row of shops on the upper level with colorful art clogging their window displays.

Sherlock's slow smile is the only warning he gives before stalking back toward the stairs.

Mary makes mumbled apologies to the guitarist before hurrying after Sherlock. She finds him in front of the shops with his fingers steepled under his chin, staring at the art in the windows.

"If you're wanting to spruce up your flat a little I'd go with the watercolor of Westminster Bridge. The reflections in the puddles are . . . is imaginative the word I'm looking for?"

"Banal," Sherlock says. "Embarrassingly overused."

Mary watches him, now closing his eyes and thinking harder. "You've solved it, then?"

Sherlock exhales, little puff of heat in the chilly air. "Nearly," he says, a grin tugging at his mouth as he turns to her. "One or two things I need to clarify with Molly."

Mary feigns surprise. "Oh, _Molly_ 's put you up to this?"

Sherlock shoves his hands in his pockets. "We should go."

"Yes . . . although, we _could_ do a bit of shopping, first, couldn't we?"

Sherlock stares. Mary bets he's starting to miss John about now, who probably only ever tries to drag him out to bars post-case.

Mary extracts Sherlock's hand from his pocket and laces their leather-gloved fingers together while Sherlock looks on dubiously.

"What," he blinks.

Mary rolls her eyes. "Vendors are less likely to try and scam me if I'm with my financially savvy _husband_."

Sherlock is still surprised, though he trails along all the same. "That's sexist," he says.

"Oh yeah," Mary says. "And so's the world. 

They cross to the next covered building. There's a little more of a crowd, there, and they're quickly swallowed up by it. Covent Garden Market isn’t as unique as some people here thought – it’s essentially a less gastronomical Reading Terminal Market, the biggest and most oppressively urban farmer's market she's ever encountered even after she'd become a cosmopolitan, and a place where she'd stolen so many things as a child that she's surprised there aren't any warrants out for her arrest based on that alone. Amish cheese and soft pretzels, water ice and a burgeoning abundance of shoppers to relieve of their wallets.

Mary leads Sherlock toward a stand whose walls are overflowing with fabric merchandise. "Hm, shall we find you a new scarf or something?"

"I have several, already," Sherlock grouches.

"Ooh, but this one is _so_ you, Sherlock," she says, picking up a severely fluffy white one.

Sherlock takes it out of Mary's hand. "Grossly overpriced. Actual cost of making the scarf estimated at . . . oh, 20p?" He holds the item in question closer to his face, tilts his head. "Nice enough to look at but the material holding it together is cheap. It'll start unraveling a couple months in. Also, this color washes me out."

"Oh, you like fine in white."

"This is _cream_."

Mary rummages through the other scarves at the stand, finding one that's a pure cherry red, which is Mary's favorite color.

"Give it here," Sherlock says.

Mary laughs. "Don't think it's quite your style, love. They haven't very much actual cashmere, here."

Sherlock takes it anyway, takes it over to the cashier and returns to hand it to Mary in a little white box.

"You didn't have to do that just to prove that you do in fact pay for things. "

Sherlock shrugs. "You wanted it. I'd thought it was terribly gentlemanly of me, really . . . "

Mary smiles, jams the box into her purse. "That's sexist."

Sherlock shrugs, though there's a subtle green cast of fondness in his eyes.

Mary hails the cab they take back to the surgery, Sherlock seeming perfectly happy to let her take the reins, now, but it feels imperious rather than respectful. She's seen him like this with John, with Mrs Hudson, with perfect strangers – that weird mix of way too needy and way too neglectful. He's every bad boyfriend, cold and tight-lipped to the point where you're ready to leave but just as you step out the door you catch him doing something endearing again, and on it goes.

"I could use your help, you know," Mary says, once they're en route.

Sherlock snaps out of his reverie. "You've a case of your own for me?"

"Oh, yes. Filled to the metaphorical brim with the highest drama," she promises. "All sorts of twists and turns, it has . . . "

"Yes?"

"The ancient art of wedding planning."

"Not ancient. Modern Western wedding traditions are largely Victorian in origin."

"Avoiding the question, Sherlock."

" _Well_ in any event I'm not entirely sure what I could contribute to something so utterly ludicrous as an actual wedding."

"Oh _nonsense_!" Mary beams. "Your attention to detail would be immensely helpful, and we've already established your eye for fashion, haven't we?"

Sherlock glares out the window as though the vaguely regal façade of King's College has offended him. "Because I've heard of couture? I wear the same suits every day."

"The same high end Spencer Hart suits, yes."

Sherlock is quiet for a long time. When he speaks again he's going for magnanimous: "If any of my many areas of expertise can aid you in your planning then of course I will make myself available for consultation. I'll not be _involved_ , however."

"Oh, certainly not."

A couple of traffic lights later and without any prompting he adds, "I won't be assisting with _seating_ charts or anything so mundane . . . "

Mary smiles. "No no, of course not."

*

She runs along Thames. She speaks Russian and Spanish and Farsi, but she runs along the Thames.

Who would expect someone like her, who has proven time and again that she can blend into any population should the mood strike her, to turn up in (generally) English-speaking London? Certainly not the kind of people who might still be looking for her. 

She'd never been much of an Anglophile, too young for Beatlemania and too old for Harry Potter, had never really gotten into any of the comedy that so many people seemed to like.

Reinvention wasn't rocket science. Only repeat words and phrases you'd already heard. Don't make educated guesses. Figure out the common extenders and ask people to repeat themselves whenever you need a minute, feed them some bullshit story about how you swear you're deaf sometimes.

So she'd kept her mouth shut when she’d first arrived in London. She'd just listened and soaked in dialects and terminology. It hadn't taken her very long, and any slip-ups could always be spun as tongue in cheek Americanizations. God bless America for that, at least.

It's so gloomy in London. Sounds like a cliché but it really is true. Spritzing rain one minute, pouring the next, sunny and snowy and everything in-between. She zips her jacket up against a gust of colder air from the river, turns her music up, doesn't stop running.

She listens to things like Glen Miller and Rosemary Clooney when she runs. Most of the people pounding the pavement around her are blasting high-energy pop music, but she prefers the predictability of a jazz scale, plain words and complex chords and the colors that distract her mind away from her straining lungs and protesting legs because it's important to keep running. 

She lets her mind wander a little. She tethers it down so securely for most of the time that she'd drive herself crazy if she couldn't at least _think_ freely now and then. And the only time it feels safe enough to do that is when she's alone by the Thames. Taking the Jubilee Line into central London just to be by the river with everyone else. Running like she has for a long time.

When she'd worked for the CIA she'd run on a treadmill in the same D.C. gym as lobbyists and members of Congress. Like them, she was milking the system for all it was worth, but unlike them she'd hated working for the government. It hadn't been a plan, just the a result of a deal to avoid jail time by selling out her co-conspirators on a gig. They'd been the kind of scumbags she would've killed on her own even without a bounty, though, so she didn't feel bad about it.

*

John has his serious face on. "Well, it's . . . very interesting, isn't it? Very interesting, indeed."

" _Very_ interesting," Mary agrees.

"The colors are . . . well. There they are."

"Mm. And the lines."

"Yes the lines too, of course. That goes without saying." John leans in and whispers to her, "Is it just me or is this basically something a toddler could've painted?"

Mary muffles a giggle with her hand. It's sheathed by warm woolen gloves which do the job nicely. 

"Because it could very well just be me, Mary. Maybe there's a whole deeper meaning to the splotches that is simply beyond my limited comprehension."

Mary peers at the painting. "Well, the red blotches could be bl—"

"Paprika, obviously. Representative of the spice of life."

She snorts. "And as for the black blotches, well, that's got to be the stain of corruption."

"Mm."

"What's the title?"

John walks over to a placard on the wall beside the huge canvas. He turns around, announces in a deadpan, " 'Black and White and Red All Over'. "

Mary bursts out laughing, attracting the humorless attention of half the exhibition's black-clothed attendees. "No it's _not_ . . . "

"Might as well be," John says. "Shall we try the next gallery?"

"Lay on, Macduff."

John smiles, leads Mary under a big plaster archway and into a smaller room with smaller pictures. "We're a bit rubbish at the posher venues, aren't we?"

"Are we?" Mary says. "I'm finding that the venues are mainly just rubbish to begin with."

"I'm glad you're impressed."

Mary laughs. "I didn't mean it like that – I know you got these tickets for free after that last case."

" . . . And that you think I'm a cheap date." He's kidding, though.

"None of that matters to me, darling," Mary says, pecking him on the lips. "As long as you put out."

John snickers and kisses her a little better before they continue meandering through the boring galleries.

"I've always had an aversion to museums just on principle," Mary says, rubbing her lips together to redistribute any kiss-smudged lipbalm. "They're never as exciting as you think they'll be." 

They were never as exciting as they'd been in her misspent youth, at least. It was strange how the books you read in childhood always stayed the most exotic in your heart – she'd read and become infatuated with _From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler_ , which had inspired her to sneak into the Philadelphia Museum of Art and create only halfway imaginary adventures for herself from wing to wing. She would run up the steps like Rocky and the people loitering with their families taking pictures would think she was adorable.

She can never tell John any of that, though. Not even if she changes the name of the museum. 

Anyone you ask has different rules to con by. Some people say you have to be yourself as much as possible. Others say you just have to lie about everything down to the last detail. She does both. She acts the way she would've acted anyway, and she also switches all the facts of her life around – you never know what connection a normal person might draw from something as incidental as her relationship with museums, and she has _Sherlock_ to contend with. 

She's had so many names that she doesn't know which one feels the most like _her_ , anymore. Sometimes she questions who she really is, if the 'real' her of childhood had been any more real than any of her personas. It isn't worth dwelling on, though - everybody is masquerading as something or another.

The thing with John is that for all that she lies through her teeth to him on a daily basis, she is more at ease with him than with anyone else. She feels more like whoever _she_ is, with him. It's the kind of thing you see on a Hallmark card, but she doesn't know how else to put it.

And it's not because he's brave or forgiving or full of the milk of human kindness. It's because he's all those things while still carrying the darker things that live within him, too - the ones he shoves down and politely pretends don't exist because he's British or deeply fucked up or whatever it is. Because _whatever_ it is, it gives her hope that she can live in Mary's life instead of just acting in it, that her emotions and relationships aren't superficial this time, that there's a realness to her reality after all. She’d never felt that way, and especially not because of a person or a romance. 

David had been a convenience, too stupid to notice her slip-ups in the beginning and too obsessed with her to be of any real interest. But he’d certainly been handy to learn how to talk and act from. 

John's hand rests at the small of Mary's back, guides her past an angular sculpture to a little nook by the emergency stairwell. He crowds her against the huge white wall and cups her jaw and kisses her, like he might've at home and far away from snobbish swarms of strangers. Mary kisses back, pulls John flush against her to surround herself in his body heat.

"You're amazing," he mutters against her mouth, kissing the corner before nuzzling up to her ear to breathe, "you are _fantastic_."

It's terrifying, that doubtful joy that tightens her chest and threatens her common sense so savagely. She makes a soft sound and tilts her chin to catch John's mouth again. His fingers slice through her hair and she licks into his mouth and can't wait to see his lips sticky with her lipbalm once they're strolling through the exhibition again.

John breaks the kiss on a laugh and that sends her heart beating faster than the kissing had. A year ago, one single second had ruined everything: John laughing in her foyer after ducking inside to avoid a neighbor, how his face had lifted from its usual solemn set into a breathless grin. Grinning at Mary five dates in and her heart had sunk because she'd known right then that she wouldn't be able to stop herself from keeping that grin intact and just for her. The next day she'd bumped into a powerful newspaper man's personal assistant accidentally-on-purpose and struck up a conversation.

Keeping John in the dark is protection. Though she isn't sure whether it's protection for him or for her. Or _from_ her.

*

Mary waits for the kettle to boil in the kitchen.

She'd baked bread in here earlier, and the wholesome smell of it lingers in the air. Her mom, who hadn't been good for much more than lying on the couch stoned out of her mind, would go on homemaking sprees sometimes when the right cocktail of drugs put her in a chipper mood. She'd clean in a blissful daze like it was a common occurrence when in fact the floor of their South Philly apartment was covered in a permanent layer of grime. She'd entreat her daughter to play the out of tune upright that the previous tenants had left instead of throwing a TV remote at her for making a racket playing the musty jazz songbook she'd lifted from a neighbor's house.

She'd always watched her mom making bread, neither of them remembering or caring that an 8 year old was loitering around the apartment on a school day. It was odd now to be the one kneading the dough, monitoring it and helping it rise, baking and checking. Like a secret reenactment that nobody else knew was happening, this strange little thrill in the execution of it because her bread is _better_.

The smell is a complicated nostalgia. It had been comforting once, before she'd been old enough to understand that good moods were an anomaly that would never come to stay.

Mary pours water into the three mismatched mugs on the little tray, cranes her head to peer out into the dining room. John is looking down while saying something and Sherlock is watching him in a way completely unlike the scrutiny he bestowed on others. A sharpened kind of softness to his gaze, the same unflinching focus as ever but his gestures and facial expressions are immediate instead of calculated like they normally were. Real chuckle at something John had said, real interest in the way John licked his lips.

"Bit of milk and . . . two sugars, was it, Sherlock?" Mary calls.

Sherlock gives a put upon sigh. " _One_ , in fact."

John turns to smile at her but Sherlock doesn’t stop watching him at all.

The way they take their tea is ironic to say the least. John's being clear and bitter while Sherlock's is murky and sweet. Mary had chosen a splash of milk for her own preference, originally out of fear of committing some unforeseen sin of Britishness by stirring in sugar the wrong way.

She takes the sugar jar down from the top shelf. The spoon she uses to get the sugar out clicks against a little strip of plastic hidden at the bottom of the jar and labeled (at random) A.G.R.A. because it's important to have it close enough to get at quickly. Keeping it about her person would've made it too easy to lose or be discovered by delightfully handsy fiancées. John never uses sugar for tea, none of the dozen or so dishes he can pull off at home call for sugar, and the only friend of John's who actually likes him and might potentially come over is in the habit of summoning John to his kingdom at Baker Street instead. 

She eyes the uncovered half of the flashdrive as she stirs in Sherlock's sugar. It's covered in precautionary plastic wrap because it's not exactly good etiquette to poison an errant houseguest. A mild poison, but still enough to knock someone out for a good long while. Who knew if she'd ever even have to use it, but incapacitating an enemy before killing them was just a smart move, and if killing them in the first place _wasn't_ a smart move then it at least gave her a chance to escape. It hadn't killed her parents, after all, though the bullets from her father's 'secret' .25 ACP had done the trick. 

She heads back into the dining room, walking over a black spot on the white carpet she'd never really succeeded in getting out. Ink cartridge that had fallen off of John's pile of stuff and exploded when he'd been moving in. Who would've thought an old cartridge had so much ink in it?

"You barely touched yours, Sherlock," Mary says, putting the tea tray down between them before taking her own with her to the head of the table. "Mind you, I'm not _surprised_ . . . "

"I wasn't hungry," Sherlock says primly. He's wearing another white D&G shirt, brand new and immaculate like he's hoping they might see him that way, too. Sherlock didn't care about the significance of coming over for dinner, but he did understand it.

"Why would you want to have dinner if you aren't hungry?"

Sherlock looks at her, looks mildly startled before covering it back up with a biting, "Additionally, the nutritional and aesthetic value of the food at Chez Morstan leaves much to be desired."

John hisses, " _Sherlock_."

Mary laughs. "At least tell me the décor is meeting with your standards?"

"It perfectly reflects your personality," Sherlock says clinically.

"Aw, you're a dear."

"While simultaneously smothering John's."

John pinches the bridge of his nose. "What are you on about?"

Mary can see the shift of light in Sherlock's eyes once he has John's attention. "All of this is yours, Mary," Sherlock says. "Well, unless you count John's toothbrush."

"Now hang on," John says. "How do you know I didn't help pick out the . . . you know, lampshades and whatever?"

"It was the same when he lived with me Mary," Sherlock continues, ignoring him. "Any contributions to the flat being absorbed by my own belongings in a matter of days. It's indicative of John's rejection of his own personality. Constantly hiding himself in others – not just people, but institutions like the army or the NHS, as well as his style of dress and the predictability of the teams he follows."

Mary's impressed by how right Sherlock is. He sometimes misses the more psychological aspects of deduction. Of course, he doesn't notice that Mary's décor isn't to her own taste, at all. She'd decided long ago that Mary Morstan was carefree and colorful, and that's how she'd decorated – a reminder to herself on how to act, if nothing else. Busy wallpaper to make up for any perceived lack of homey details, a couple of photoshopped pictures of imagined past events, someone's heirlooms and childhood relics bought from yard sales in Bedfordshire and kept in boxes under the guest room bed. 

She'd enjoyed creating her own space because it meant being in control. It had felt affirming, too, like picking out pillows for her living room meant permanently binding herself to a new and better way of life. She'd put flowers in the window because her mom had been allergic and every time she watered them now it was nostalgic, like the bread. Like giving her hives.

"Come now," Mary soothes, "John doesn't hide himself in us, do you John?"

John blinks. "I - "

"Of course not," she says. "You're just not as messy as Sherlock or as stylish as me, don't you think?" 

Her cheerfulness holds off any serious argument, though Mary can see John is still mulling it over and Sherlock has belatedly realized that John is upset by what he'd said – he keeps glancing at him whenever John looks down to take another drink, so afraid of overstepping again in a way she suspects he wasn't before the fall. They talk about the wedding after that, and after their tea is gone Mary ambles back into the kitchen to wash the mugs out.

"So," John says, distant from the dining room. "You've got the dress, now, have you? When do I get to see it?"

" _John_ ," Sherlock says urgently. "You mustn't see it _at all_ until the wedding day."

John laughs, disbelieving. "Since when do you care about wedding superstitions?"

"Traditions," Sherlock corrects. "And Mary cares, John."

*

John is kissing Mary on their bed, hovering over her. She twines a leg around one of his to drag him closer so his erection presses between her legs and she can grind up into it.

"You do know," she says, pausing to answer John's kisses, "that Sherlock is over the moon for you."

John laughs. "He's over the moon for _murders_." 

"Like a dog, he is, watching you. Obsessive. Desperate for praise."

John raises an eyebrow. "The way most people tell it, I'm the faithful sidekick."

"Nooo," Mary says. She grinds their hips together again to make John's breath hitch. "You can live without him – well, you have. He's realized that missing you from the equation doesn't work for him, anymore. You're _both_ quite codependent, of course . . . "

"Oh yeah? So what does that make you?"

Mary shrugs. "Lucky I got to you before Sherlock came back?"

John laughs, but it's one of the deflective ones. "My feelings for the both of you are _somewhat_ different in nature."

"As they should be. Same goes for anyone, really," Mary says. "You want him, though."

John smiles, quick. "I'm not - "

"I didn't say anything about what you are, love. I just said you want him. And who doesn't, really? A girl could come to the sound of that voice alone."

John's smile gets wider and falser so Mary pulls his head down to kiss him. 

"Tell me what you think about, with him. I _can_ keep a secret, you know."

"Mary - "

"You think about his mouth, though, don't you? I bet you do. What it would feel like against yours. What it would feel like wrapped around your cock."

"Jesus, Mary . . . "

"And Sherlock?" Mary flips them over, straddles John's hips. Watches his chest heave and his eyes darken. She presses her hand against his groin and is rewarded with a muttered curse. "Going to Baker Street some day because he'd texted you. But when you get there he's wearing all black so his skin honest to God looks like it's glowing. Especially at that little hallow between his clavicles because ties and top buttons irritate him." 

John's cock twitches under her palm. "Suprasternal notch," he corrects breathlessly. "Aren't you supposed to be a nurse?"

"Oh, because you've had to remember _that_ so often as a bloody GP?"

"Well . . . "

"Glancing up from your newspaper and him staring at you, catching that look he never lets you see, or at least you explain it away whenever you do see it. John, you _know_ how easy it would be to have one of those looks turn into a kiss. And what would you even do, if you got to kiss Sherlock? Freeze or shove him away or punch him again, perhaps?"

John's throat works. He doesn't manage to make a sound, just lies there under her panting and enthralled.

Mary shifts back a little to open up his fly, pulls his cock out and gives it a few slow strokes as she continues, "This is his hand. Touching your lovely prick for the first time but he's a quick study, Sherlock, so he'd be perfect at it, wouldn't he? Do you think he'd figure out what you want and do it, or just take what he wants instead? Always a toss up with him. Or maybe he'd get all gorgeously overwhelmed and start asking you to teach him and show him things . . . " 

Mary's turning herself on as much as John, so she hops off of him to hurry out of her clothes. Comfy shirt and obnoxious bra, stretchy ASOS skirt and damp red panties.

John's quick on the uptake, getting naked from the waist down and struggling to pull his cardigan over his head. Mary has other ideas, though – she grabs his twisted up arms and twists them up some more using the sleeves. Gets back on top of him and dips down to kiss him demandingly.

"So, what about fucking Sherlock?"

John's head tilts back. "Mary . . . "

" _Sherlock_. I'm talking about Sherlock your friend who's on top of you begging to be fucked so you'd do it, wouldn't you?" Mary reaches between her legs to spread the wetness there around, pauses to rub it over her clit and sigh at the feeling.

John's licking his lips but his mouth falls open in a silent scream as Mary sinks down on his cock, so wonderfully thick that she loses her breath for a minute. One of John's hands fights free to grab at her breast, slides down to play with her pussy and _shit_ that isn't helping . . .

"Think about it, John," she says, voice coming out so dark. "Think about how tight he'd be. The dazed look in his eyes and I _know_ you love it when he says your name under normal circumstances, but . . . _John_."

John groans in response, hips following Mary's as she lifts up. She's planning on riding him like this til he's squirming and begging to come but he thwarts that fast – throwing the cardigan away so he can hold her hips still as he fucks her, short deep thrusts that strike at everything good inside and make her feel deliciously desperate. 

Mary gasps and leans forward to make it easier, returns John's messy kisses and moans into them when his thumb starts dragging over her clit light and slow, relentless and fantastic.

Her orgasm hits her suddenly – one hand flying to cover the one on her hip and make John stop moving while she clenches down and rolls her hips harder. She's gasping and relishing the waves of it when John ducks his head to suck one of her nipples into his mouth and flick his thumb faster over her clit until she comes again. He makes a lovely delirious sound at the feeling of her around him, fucks her a little more until he comes too.

*

She's reading an online newspaper on the computer at the receptionist's desk.

She reads all of it, every day. And although the _Global News_ can be a little sensationalist and people like to read that kind of stuff, that's not why she's reading it.

When she'd come to London she hadn't had much of a plan other than to disappear, again. Start over, _again_. She'd got a gig in her line of work after a couple of months, sneaking out to take care of her new employer's occasional 'loose ends' while David ate up her bookclub alibi like the guileless puppy he was.

She hadn't known about Magnussen. She just hadn't, because _that_ was how entrenched he was in everything – you didn't even notice his presence because it was already everywhere. But you started noticing when he waved your life in front of you and you had to shut up and listen to your options.

It had turned out her employer was a loose end to Magnussen, so she'd taken care of him instead. Of course, Magnussen had added that incident to the already extensive collection he'd harvested from her previous lives. She hasn't heard a peep from him in 4 years, but not a day goes by that she forgets. 

So she reads his newspaper to remind herself of what he can do. Bides her time and works very patiently on her plan to remove him from her equation. Lives a quiet civilian life in Willesden Green and doesn't take any more gigs. Her gun's in a hollowed out stone in the nave of a nearby church, and her go-bag's in a booby-trapped locker at Heathrow. 

Maybe she's been putting on the act so long this time that it's become a habit, or maybe the way she acts now really is real. She'd just never thought there was any fulfillment for someone like her in normality. She'd never thought she should be the one who enjoyed a quiet night in front of the TV with John and without drugs being done or drugs being sold because she _could handle_ her parents and she _could handle_ the cons, and who else was going to kill the people who did terrible things if she was the only one with the balls to do it? 

She's an addict to it, now, though. Staying away from drugs hadn't let her avoid the love of a good high – and John made her laugh or made her come, watched her like he didn't want to miss a second of her and told her everything that was fucked up about himself but it only made him seem more dynamically real to her than other people did, and that got her so fucking high.

"Busy day?"

Mary smiles and looks up. "Hello, Sherlock," she says, minimizing a window. "Here for John? He's almost done, but you already knew that."

"Yes," Sherlock says, hands in his coat pockets and standing up very straight, wrapped up in black and white Belstaff. Clinging tight to his persona. "Thank you for that, by the way."

"Quite useful, isn't it? Being on good terms with his receptionist."

Sherlock nods, looking around the waiting room. "Don't you have patients to attend to?"

"I'm a nurse," Mary says. Well, kind of. "All the strenuous medical training, none of the glamor of making diagnoses. You'd _hate_ it." 

"Pinner's been arrested," Sherlock says. "It was just a matter of waiting to catch him in the act."

"Sorry, who?"

"Arthur Pinner, the man who was masquerading as Dr Hall."

"Ohh, so you've solved it, then?"

"Hall had just taken a job at Bart's Hospital. He was also an avid art collector, and had put a particularly highly sought after piece on display in his office. Arthur Pinner owns a shop in Covent Garden Market selling mediocre art with broad tourist appeal, which would be unspeakably pedestrian if not for the thriving stolen art trade he operates from the shop as well. Pinner knew Hall had won the piece at a recent auction after chatting with him in his shop while Hall was looking for generic pieces to decorate his new office with, and after Pinner failed to find the painting in his house he knew it must be at Hall's place of work. Of course it's incredibly easy to sneak into Bart's, so Pinner slipped inside undetected, found Hall's schedule and proceeded to impersonate him every Tuesday and Thursday and learn the routines around the hospital, biding his time until he saw his chance to smuggle the painting out. Unluckily for him, Molly Hooper noticed that the new surgeon coming in to work didn't always have veneers on the same teeth when he smiled. We were able to catch him at a side entrance with an unusually rectangular gurney – "

" 'The Case of the Covent Garden Black Market'."

Sherlock's train of thought screeches to a halt. "Sorry what?"

"Well I'm being John, aren't I? I've just given you a title."

"John doesn't write the blog for _me_. And he sensationalizes my deductions as though I'm some sort of sideshow act, rather than laying out my process in a practical manner."

"Oh I think he gets the highlights well enough." Mary folds her arms, leans back in her chair. "Mm. Lot of assumptions on this one, though, aren't there?"

"Educated guesses."

" _Reckless_ guesses."

"Guesses that _were in fact accurate_ as it happens . . . "

Mary's giggling and Sherlock is only just realizing that she's teasing him when the exam room door opens.

"Having fun without me?" John asks, shrugging into his coat as he rounds the corner. 

Mary turns to him. "Never too much, dear."

John's eyes are more intoxicating than Sherlock's. They trust in Mary so completely and it's both her favorite sight and the thing that puts her stomach in knots when she thinks too much about it. "Right. Sorry, were you talking about a case?"

Sherlock freezes, looking guilty as hell. John avoids meeting his eyes, keeps forgetting not to clench his hand, turned resolutely toward Mary.

Mary laughs. "What else? That one you two did, Sherlock - where I believe you dressed up as a clown, was it?"

John snorts. "A sight I won't soon forget. Well, I'll just bring the car around, shall I?"

"Yeah," Mary says. "Just got to log off."

John leaves. Sherlock stares at Mary as she closes windows and saves documents, wrapping the red scarf he'd given her around her neck as she waits for her computer to catch up.

"Why did you do that?" Sherlock asks.

She shrugs. "John would feel left out if he knew we'd done a case together." 

"I realize that," Sherlock says. "Why did you lie, for me?"

She changes her expression to one of concern. "We're _friends_ , Sherlock." Well, kind of.

Sherlock believes her, though. "Yes, I suppose it's better if John doesn't know about this particular case . . . "

She smiles. "For his own sake, really."

*


End file.
